Their View: Poor communication from Martinez administration

SANTA FE -- In the wicked world of television news, layoffs were about to occur at a network. A newspaper broke the story before TV staffers had been told of doomsday.

Then a network executive added to the bad feelings with a feeble explanation: "We're in the business of communicating, but not with each other."

Gov. Susana Martinez's administration operates in similar style, but without any admission that destructive communication breakdowns have occurred.

Last month, one of Martinez's cabinet secretaries, Sidonie Squier, called together executives of 15 nonprofit mental health agencies. She told them their funding from Medicaid and other taxpayer sources was being shut off because an audit had revealed "credible allegations" of fraud exceeding $36 million.

Squier would not share any details of alleged wrongdoing with the agencies, saying they were under investigation by the state attorney general.

Marti Everitt, for 27 years the CEO of a mental health agency in Roswell, found Squier's management style perplexing. After years of clean financial audits, Everitt's agency faces closure based on broad but explosive charges that it cannot rebut.

"We're branded as doing fraudulent billings," she said.

Only a select few know the details of the cases, and they do not include the accused.

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Public Consulting Group Inc., the Boston company behind the New Mexico audit, made similar allegations in North Carolina. North Carolina's state auditor overturned most of the findings last year, concluding that fraud allegations totaling $38.5 million were sensational but incorrect.

Everitt's nonprofit agency and perhaps a dozen others may close their doors in the coming week unless they can obtain a federal court order negating Squier's decision that halted the flow of money.

Roque Garcia is CEO of a mental health agency with a 50-year history in Las Cruces and a record of honest work based on audit findings. He provided a series of emails in which his staff pointed out billing mistakes by OptumHealth, day-to-day overseer of the 15 agencies.

Squier could have questioned agency directors and learned that her own watchdog had fleas. Instead, Garcia said, Squier punished the agencies with a suspect audit and inflammatory headlines.

Now Garcia is preparing to lay off 100 employees. "We will furlough most staff by Monday," he said.

His agency has an active patient list numbering about 2,000. State Sen. Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, calls these patients "the fragile population" that could sink back into addiction or unemployment.

Squier maintains that she had to kill funding for the agencies because they could be violating the law. But OptumHealth for three years was supposed to be auditing these agencies. If the problem was so long-standing and widespread, why didn't OptumHealth flag any overpayments months or years ago? In short, where was the communication?

Squier is not the only cabinet secretary accused of holding back important information.

Hanna Skandera, secretary-designate of public education, waited two years to tell state legislators about a federal inquiry alleging that New Mexico had not properly funded special education for the 2011 budget year.

Now Skandera is appealing a finding that could cost the state $34 million or more in federal funding.

Skandera says the money shortage for special education, if there was one, dates to Democrat Bill Richardson's time as governor. True enough, but that political plum was all the more reason for her to tell legislators immediately that they might have to shore up special education funding to stop a federal penalty.

State Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, taught special education for 30 years. She said the Martinez administration should have spoken up to make sure that kids who need help were getting it.

"Skandera and Martinez could be out of office by the time we have to pay this bill," Stewart said.

Making sure state agencies run smoothly is not the glamorous part of being governor, but it might be the most important.

Obfuscation, that 50-cent word we never expected to use, has taken hold in Martinez's administration. What we have is a failure to communicate.

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